


Rheology

by apparitionism



Series: Dynamics [7]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hey, welcome back to Ballet AU. Herein, a new cast member sends everybody a little off-balance as Helena and Myka attempt, with varying degrees of success, to deal with a major transition in Helena's career. Plus there is drinking! And swearing! And somewhat comical attempts to refrain from swearing in front of Junior!  Also: dancing!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Myka picks up the ringing phone and says hello absently; Claudia’s already left for the day, and Myka’s trying to make her way through a couple of research reports on microfibers before she herself heads for home.

“Hey, Myka!” Steve says. He’s usually a pretty cheerful guy, but his tone is far too enthusiastic to be real.

“Hey, Steve,” Myka responds, a bit hesitantly. It’s odd for him to be calling her here. “What’s happening?”

“Well, here’s the thing. You know how in the military, they say DefCon whatever number to show how bad the situation is?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, Mrs. Frederic might have called Helena in a while ago.”

“Okay…”

“And I think it’s pretty safe to say that the DefCon is basically not countable.”

Liam, in the background, says, “Tell her that crazy Giselle is looking for an _ax_.”

“She is not,” Steve says to him. “Is she?”

“If she knew where that Sam girl is right now? Oh yeah.”

“Okay,” Steve says, then to Myka, “Well, anyway, I hate to be interrupting your work, but I think you might want to, as a kind of general humanitarian gesture, please help us all. By which I mean, you might want to get home so you can keep her from tearing up your place, plus, you know, random people and cats, with whatever ax she ends up finding. Also I think the junior mint might want to stay at Tracy’s a little later than usual. And maybe for the rest of her life.”

“Jesus, Steve, what happened? Mrs. Frederic didn’t fire her, did she?”

“Not exactly… but let’s just say that that upcoming _Swan Lake_ is going to be a point of some contention. All kidding aside, we have never seen her look like she did when she got out of that meeting. I mean we’ve all known this was sort of looming, but I don’t guess we ever really, or at least I didn’t ever really, genuinely think… honestly, I don’t know what I thought. It’s Helena, you know?”

Myka sighs. “It usually is. Okay. Thanks for telling me, and I guess I’ll… did you say she went home?”

“That’s what she _said_. But who knows, right?”

“Well, I’ll try there first, anyway. Tell Liam I hope he didn’t catch too much fallout.”

“He’ll be fine,” Steve says. Liam makes choking noises, and Myka can hear Steve trying to decide between a laugh and a frown as he says, “Assuming he makes it through the next five minutes. I’ll let you know.”

Myka hangs up the phone. She considers going to Tracy’s, as if her sister’s place were a hurricane shelter, somewhere she could grab onto Junior and duct-tape some very thick plywood to the windows and wait until the storm exhausts itself.

****

At home, Myka lets herself in the front door with no idea of what she’ll find. No cat rushes the door, and that’s unusual. She doesn’t really think Helena would have done anything to him, but…

…she realizes that Helena is sitting on the sofa in the dark living room.

“Where’s Pas De?” Myka tries. “Did you kill him?”

“Where is the baby?” Helena asks. “Did _you_ kill _her_?”

“She’s still at Tracy’s for a while.”

Helena says, “The cat fled from me.”

“Yeah,” Myka says. “The cat’s smarter than I am. I heard you had a meeting not too long ago.”

Helena mutters, “One day those boys will learn to keep their mouths shut.”

“No, I think I appreciated the advance warning. So do you want to tell me what’s going on, or should I guess? Steve said it had something to do with _Swan Lake_.”

“It most certainly does have something to do with _Swan Lake_.”

Myka had not expected this to be easy. But now she sees that every bit is going to be excruciating. “And what exactly does it have to do with _Swan Lake_?”

“Would you say that I have… lost a step?”

Myka tries an honest non-response. “I would say that that is the most loaded question I have ever been asked.”

“Answer it.”

Myka tries a differently honest non-response. “I would say that I am not the right person to make that judgment.”

“Answer it!”

Myka tries to tell the truth. “You dance fewer roles, and less frequently, already. And when you do, you get tired. You get sore. And those things happen more often than they used to, and they last longer than they used to, and whether you have lost a step in performance is truly not my call to make… but I love your body. And I would like it to last a lot longer than it sometimes seems like it will, when you’re tired and sore. And I really don’t want to say anything else until you tell me what happened today.”

She has not ventured away from the door. Helena now stands and walks as far away from her as she can… Myka supposes she should be glad that Helena is still in the room as she turns her back and says, “Mrs. Frederic has determined that I will dance only half the part.”

“Half the part?”

“In _Swan Lake_ ,” Helena says.

Myka sighs, because it is all back to excruciating. “Which half?”

“Black.” As if she is saying that she will be _executed_ on stage.

“You have said to me with that very mouth that that’s the more interpretively interesting dancing. That you like it better than white.”

Helena says, in a starched voice, “It is the smaller part.”

“True,” Myka says. She tries for nonchalance as she goes on, “So who’s going to be out there dancing uninterestingly for a long time in white?”

“I am, if I have anything to do with it.”

“Right. And if you don’t?” Though she has already surmised this from what Steve and Liam said earlier.

“Young Ms. Shaw.”

“That’s a nice promotion for Sam, isn’t it?” Myka can’t help herself, she laughs a little. “And she hasn’t been here long either. I bet Liam called you Giselle, didn’t he, and reminded you of a time… god, Helena, we were all so young then.”

Helena turns around. “And I’m old now, is that it?”

Myka keeps trying for truth. “In the regular world? Not at all. But this is not the regular world. You are over forty. You should have cut back even further, years ago. You’ve seen girls retire, all around you, but you keep going. And you’re beautiful. You’re beautiful, and your dancing’s beautiful, but you can’t keep doing this.”

“Well,” Helena says, in full hauteur, “you and Mrs. Frederic have thus far been strangely sympatico, and I’m so pleased that your rapport extends to the topic of my career. She too suggested that it would not be inappropriate for this to be my, and I quote, ‘literal swan song.’”

Myka starts to laugh again, then turns it into a feeble cough. “You have to admit that’s _slightly_ funny. I mean, I don’t even know Mrs. Frederic that well yet, but that she would make even that much of a joke.”

“Says the woman whose swan song this is _not_.”

“Helena, you are an amazing specimen, and you’ve astonished everyone, and it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair at all, but yes, I get to keep on doing what I do, and you have to stop. But I am not going to love you any less, and Junior is not going to love you any less, and in fact nobody is going to love you any less.”

“I don’t care about being loved.”

“I would like to think you don’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Now Helena faces Myka fully. Her carriage, her posture, her face, her hair, everything, everything looks as it used to. She might be that Giselle still… but only in the blurring dusk. “I’m a dancer,” she says.

Myka says, helplessly, “I know. I know.”

And Myka hasn’t touched her, has stayed across the room from her, but now she goes to her and cradles her, because Helena was angry before, but now she’s… desolate. Myka knows, because Helena is letting herself be cradled, rocked in Myka’s arms.

Myka can’t reassure her about the dancing; there is nothing she can say to make that any less painful. That will hurt as it hurts, and it will keep on hurting, and Helena will never get over it. She may resign herself; she may dance smaller parts, dance more-modern parts, even teach someday… but she will never get over it. Myka can’t fix that, can barely even look at it in a nondamaging way. All she can do is love Helena, such that when she says “I love you” it is always true, such that its strength does not ever diminish. Helena won’t see that for what it is right now… Myka knows that Helena did mean exactly what she said, before: she doesn’t care about being loved. Right now, Helena doesn’t care. But she has cared before, and she will care again, and Myka wants her to be able to look back to this moment and remember that even when she didn’t care, Myka did. Myka does.

As Myka’s lips fall to Helena’s neck, as she pushes at her shirt to expose her starkly muscled shoulder, Helena says, “You’re trying to show me that I’m not old, you’re trying to distract me—”

“You don’t know what I’m trying to do,” Myka says. But she pulls back, and she waits.

They look at each other. And then Myka sees it: the stress, the shear, had made something in Helena stop, but now it starts again, just enough. Myka leans to her again, kisses her fluid mouth, puts her hands on the skin under which the blood runs, listens to the way her breath moves. Feels the changes in the way her breath flows, where the blood beats, when her mouth tears away, how she breaks. How Myka’s beautiful, perfect prima ballerina breaks.

As they lie together quietly, after, Myka gets more of the story. “So it is the whales again?” she asks. “All the women?”

Helena shakes her head slowly against Myka’s shoulder. “No. Something new, apparently, men included. But not Steve. Steve is co-directing.”

Myka is glad to hear this. Steve is looking to his own future; he, out of all of them, is feeling his age most acutely. He is feeling it literally, in fact, for he will have his right knee replaced in a few months.

“Liam is dancing the prince,” Helena offers, and Myka thinks Mrs. Frederic most likely intends this as a sop to Helena. Liam is an amazing specimen in his own right, for he is younger than Helena, but not by much. Helena goes on, “She wants to meet with you, to talk about the costuming—but of course you’ll hear from her about that.” She takes a breath, as if to continue speaking, but then she stops.

“What is it?” Myka asks.

Helena moves her face so that she is not looking at Myka. “You’llmakeminebetterwon’tyou.”

And gently, so gently, Myka says, “Of course I will. I always do. I always have.”

Still looking away, Helena says, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Myka tells her, and there is clearly only so much either of them can take; this is the end of it, for now. “Should I go to Tracy’s and get Junior?”

Helena nods. “I’ll call and apologize to Tracy.”

“I don’t think she was at all bothered, but if there’s any apologizing to be done today, I’ll do it. You just get yourself back together, okay?”

“Okay,” Helena says. But when Myka moves to get up, Helena holds her down, just for a moment more. Then she nods again, and she lets go.

“Your mama’s had a rough day,” Myka tells her daughter when they’re on their way home. “So if you could be extra nice.”

“I have something to show her!” Junior enthuses, and she seems ready to wiggle out of her skin at the thought of it.

“That’s probably just what she needs,” Myka says, though she is thinking, _or possibly to be locked in a room alone for quite some time._

At home, Junior flings herself at Helena for a hug with a yell of “Mama!” Then she backs up into the center of the living room. “Guess what we learned to do today!”

“I could not possibly guess. What on earth did you learn to do today?” Helena asks. She looks a question at Myka, who shrugs.

“Watch!” And she performs a terribly wobbly glissade devant, in response to which Myka has difficulty not laughing out loud.

But Helena says, very seriously, “I am impressed that you attempted that in fifth position. Most beginners stick to third.”

Junior beams and asks where Pas De is; Helena says he is most likely hiding under a bed, pining for his favorite Bering-Wells. And Myka wonders if she will ever understand the strange combination of ego, genius, rage, and tenderness she married.

****

Peace, or at least familiarity, of a sort, descends, as the motor that drives any production begins to rumble through its initial fits and starts. Tracy is designing the sets for the new _Swan Lake_ , so Myka isn’t surprised to see her at the theater now and again. But Tracy knows the theater very well, knows its dimensions, what can be done in the space… so when Myka keeps seeing her… at rehearsal, stopping by costuming to watch the dancers’ fittings, dropping Junior off and staying to chat…

“Tracy,” Myka says, “are you around more?”

“Than?”

“Usual.”

“No.”

Myka’s not quite sure she believes her sister… but right now, she has a Helena-sized problem to worry about. It’s a Helena-sized problem that is compounded by a Sam Shaw–sized problem, and while Sam Shaw is less of a problem in that Myka is not married to her, she is still a temperamental little prima who is dancing a role with very high stakes. She is going to be a beautiful white swan to look at, possibly even more beautiful than Helena—heresy, Myka knows, and she would never say it aloud, but Myka finds Sam’s looks slightly softer than Helena’s, slightly more girlish, in a tough-adolescent sense, and that is the white swan. That is _this_ white swan, at any rate, and that she is dark like Helena will make the splitting of the part that much more effective.

The toughness of Sam’s looks carries over into her attitude as well—minus any kind of softening, girlish or otherwise. Myka hadn’t known Sam very well before this, so she has no idea if the surliness to which she is regularly treated is situational or chronic. She does know that there are times when Sam will take it down a level or two: interacting with Junior, for example, can make Sam seem slightly less irritable, but that could be because Myka won’t let the impressively foulmouthed Sam swear in her daughter’s presence. Some days, when the other dancers are around, they will complain lightly along with her and keep the worst of her incivility at bay. But some days, nothing helps, and Myka has to send everyone away, just so Sam will stop _muttering_ long enough to let Myka concentrate on the costume, see it move, listen to it whisper.

An additional part of the Sam Shaw–sized problem is Sam Shaw’s size: she is tiny. She is supposedly five foot three, which is the minimum height their company will accept, but Myka’s tape measure tells a slightly shorter story. Myka has never costumed seriously for such a small person, and the scale of everything seems wrong.

She has had to, in some sense, start again. One reason Sam is short is that her torso is slightly undersized, in relation to her legs. Her body is not perfectly proportioned like Helena’s—and Helena’s body _is_ perfect; Myka knows this not because she worships Helena’s body with love, but because she has clothed Helena’s body with precision. (Of course Helena’s body is perfect when Myka holds her, too. But Myka tries very hard in other contexts to remind herself that _that_ perfection is beside the point.) So Myka cuts and sews, places panels on Sam, tells her to move, feels where the stitches shift, where the fabric slips and slides, where the stays refuse to cooperate. She jokes to Sam, because for some reason she feels compelled to keep trying to joke with Sam, “If you had an extra couple of ribs, it would really help me out.”

“So fucking sue me for not drinking enough fucking milk as a kid.”

Undoubtedly, an excellent attitude day.

Myka towers over Sam, and that clearly angers her too, particularly when Myka has to be close to her, has to loom. The only advantage to their size difference that Myka has been able to discern is that because Sam is tiny, Myka can lift her. She does not have to call in one of the men, as she does if she wants to see what a costume of Helena’s, for example, will do when she is held in the air. “Do me a favor,” she says now. “Just, like, three supported assemblés, let me see how that feels to both of us, and then I will happily say we are done for now.”

“Thank sweet fucking jesus.”

Myka stands behind Sam as she gathers herself, then says, “Ready… and.”

Myka is always surprised by the fact that Sam is barely any weight at all. She is explosive as a dancer, which makes her seem a physically larger presence on stage than she is in life; somehow Myka cannot keep from expecting that to translate into heaviness in her hands. It’s part of why she keeps getting the costume wrong, she thinks as she lifts this wisp of a person, lifts her, lifts again, and lets her land softly. Myka looks down at the top of Sam’s head, and Sam looks up at her. Myka expects a snarl, given the down-up view, but Sam says, “That felt better. You changed something.”

This makes Myka smile. “I did. Those stays will stay if it’s the last thing I do.”

To her great surprise, this in turn makes Sam chuckle.

And then Myka looks up. And realizes that even as her Sam-sized problem seems to have become a bit smaller, her Helena-sized problem is about to engulf the universe.

“I would have cleared my throat,” Helena says, “but I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Myka still has her hands, her hands that now seem so large, so visible, wrapped around Sam’s abdomen, and she feels the ribcage under her fingers move—is Sam trembling? No, Myka realizes: she’s _laughing_. Which certainly makes sense, on some level; as Myka has observed in rehearsal, Sam loves to see Helena lose her cool. And given Helena’s face right now, her cool is precarious… but still. “Watch it,” she says softly. “Your life could get very difficult.”

At that, the snickering subsides a bit.

Helena looks like her cool is leaving the building.

Tracy chooses that moment to walk in, saying, “Myka, do you have any idea where—”

And stops dead at the tableau, which Myka, being a part of it, can only imagine: she herself still with her hands on Sam, Helena staring at them both with what has very quickly, and very clearly, become something like murderous intent.

“Okay,” Tracy says. “Okay.”

Something in Tracy’s voice makes Myka look more closely at her sister’s face. It is wearing an expression that, horrifyingly, bears some similarity to Helena’s. And now Myka feels Sam’s body tense. Nobody is laughing anymore.

Tracy just stands there. They all just stand there. Then Tracy says, “Myka, why are you… I mean, are you _hugging_ her?”

Myka looks down at what she assumes are still her arms, and she assumes she would know if she were hugging anybody with those arms, but as it turns out, she has assumed wrongly. She doesn’t know if she was instinctively trying to protect Sam—she should have thrown her out a window, away from Helena, if that were the goal—but yes, she right now has her arms around Sameen Shaw, newly promoted principal dancer, and her wife—her soon-to-be-retired principal-dancer wife—and her sister are, quite rightly, openmouthed at the sight.

Tracy shakes her head. She raises both her hands, turns around, and walks out of the workroom.

“No, Tracy, wait!” Sam says, and she sounds almost desperate. She rips away from Myka and runs after Tracy.

Myka certainly can’t blame her for wanting to get out of the situation. Myka herself would like to get out of the situation, but she is married to it, and she knows that this is the worst possible set of circumstances in which to raise Helena’s always-sensitive jealousy hackles, but she hasn’t actually done anything wrong, and if Helena thinks… “You know you’re being ridiculous, right?” she says.

Helena snaps, “Don’t tell me what I know.”

“Helena,” Myka says. “Stop it. You know perfectly well that that was not what you’re pretending it looked like.”

“I said, don’t tell me what I know. And I don’t care what it looks like to me. I care what it looks like to other people.”

Myka wants to shake her. “Okay, first, you obviously do care what it looks like to you. But second, why would you care what it looks like to other people? Do you seriously think that somebody is going to see me lift Sam Shaw—or even _hug_ Sam Shaw, which I was really not doing—and think that I’m… cheating on you with her? Leaving you for her?”

Helena says nothing.

“You seriously think that. You seriously think that somebody in this company—and those are the only people who are likely to come in here, by the way—is going to think that I have eyes for someone who isn’t you.”

“Our daughter might come in here. Your sister _did_ come in here.”

“And you think she thinks what? That I’m trading you in for a new model?”

“Newer.” Helena might as well be seven-year-old Junior, given the pout she puts on the word.

“Oh my _god_. It really is the case that you don’t listen to a single word I say, except anything that you can take and twist into something negative. _Those_ words, you hear just fine.”

Again, Helena says nothing.

“The worst part is, I don’t think you even really believe this. You’re angry at the whole situation, and you’re taking it out on me. Well, and Sam. I half expect you to hire somebody to kneecap her.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.”

Was that a crack in the façade? Myka thinks it might have been, so she tries to respond in kind. “Oh, I’m sure you have. How about this: kneecap me instead, so I can go to the hospital and not have to deal with either one of you, okay? A nice little vacation in traction, where they bring me my meals and I get to watch TV all day. No primas in sight.”

“If that’s the way you feel about it,” Helena says, and Myka realizes she has misread.

She sighs. “Will you come here, please?” If Helena would just put _herself_ in Myka’s arms instead of thinking about Sam being there, some of this might dissipate.

Helena doesn’t move.

Myka sighs again. “I do not have infinite patience, Helena. I think I am pretty good about a lot of things, but I do not have infinite patience.”

Helena says, “I never expected you to.” She whirls around and stalks out.

“Hey!” Myka yells after her. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

She gets no answer. She is to a certain extent relieved by that. And she is _extremely_ relieved by the fact that she is not the one who is going to have to wrangle those two in rehearsal this afternoon.

****

Late that evening, when rehearsal is over, when Helena is in her dressing room, Sam Shaw bangs on the door. Helena knows it is Sam because she yells, “Goddammit, Helena, open your fucking door!” Helena opens the door. She does not know why, but she does it, and there is Sam, holding a bottle of amber alcohol, from which she takes a rapid swig.

“What do you want, Ms. Shaw?” Helena asks. She had tried mightily to keep this morning’s anger tamped down during rehearsal, mostly for Steve’s sake, and she had, in the main, succeeded, but now… now, here is Sam Shaw again, looking young, looking beautiful, and Helena is reminded of the strange yet lovely picture Sam and Myka had made together, and she wants to _bite something_.

Sam says, “What do I want. Yeah. Right, you _would_ ask that.”

“Never mind, Ms. Shaw,” Helena says. “It is clear enough what you want. At first I thought it was just my place in this company, but given earlier, it is plain to see—”

Sam has been drinking from the bottle again, but now she interrupts, “Don’t fucking call me Ms. Shaw. And jesus, Helena,” she says, with a small cough, “do you think I want your _wife_?” She laughs and pushes past Helena into the dressing room. “Get yourself a glass,” she directs.

And for some reason, Helena does this too: she takes a slightly dirty coffee cup from the edge of the vanity, and she holds it out to Sam, who gives it a quick, slightly skeptical eye, then pours a generous amount in. She hands it back to Helena. “Drink up,” she commands.

“I generally don’t,” Helena says, but she drinks anyway. Bourbon. Of reasonable quality. She tries to get a look at the label on the bottle, but Sam is now gesturing with it.

“I don’t give one single fuck what you generally don’t. We are clearing the fucking air. Do you honestly think I want your wife.”

Helena drinks again. “Who wouldn’t want my wife?” she asks.

“Fair point. She is out-of-bounds beautiful and talented and quit getting that look on your face, because I am only saying what is objectively true, because look, here’s the thing: what I really want?” She stops, drinks.

“What you really want?” Helena prompts.

“Is your sister-in-law.” She drinks again.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

“I beg your pardon?” Helena asks. She takes another sip of the whiskey. Its quality seems to be improving.

Sam says, “I know, right? It’s crazy. She doesn’t even really like girls, right?”

Helena tells the truth: “I have, honestly, no idea. In the past, to my knowledge, no, but she has never made a _statement_ of any sort.”

“Okay,” Sam says quickly. “Okay, so if you don’t know for sure, that’s a window, right?” Another slug of whiskey. “Right? That is my goddamn window.”

“I have no idea if that is any sort of window. I do know that while she had a boyfriend some time ago, she is not with anyone right now. So there is that.” Helena drinks again, this time in hopes of dampening her incredulity at the situation. Or at least in hopes of keeping that incredulity out of her voice.

“That’s good. Because even though _you_ think I’d be happy to bang your wife on the sly, I don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Oh? You would turn my wife down?”

“Nice _trap_. And yes I would, because first, you wouldn’t even fucking _blink_ while you killed me, and probably her too, and as one coldhearted assassin to another, I salute you for that.”

“The ballet,” Helena interjects, “is no place for sentiment.”

Sam snickers. “Exactly. I’m surprised you haven’t shot me in the fucking foot. But second, an affair with your wife? She’d probably never shut up about you or that kid of yours, just like now. That and fucking microfibers. No offense, but that’d make for the most boring sex ever.”

“Hm,” Helena says. Now she takes a contemplative drink.

“Oh man. Okay. Talk about the sex.”

“I do not want to talk about that,” Helena says primly.

“Yeah, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“She is amazing.” Because it is true, and Helena is proud of that, proud that Myka is so amazing, proud that after the number of years it has been, they are still amazing together.

“Yeah, and I’m all amazed that you think she’s amazing. But for my own info, how much like her sister is she?”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Do not fucking tell me what I am serious about. Have another drink.”

“My wife will kill me.”

“Right. Totally.” She waits.

“All right,” Helena agrees. She holds out her cup.

This time, after Sam pours, she clinks the bottle against Helena’s cup. “Now…” she says. “Tips.”

Helena shakes her head. “I have no tips.”

“I don’t believe you. Bering tips!”

“I have no tips,” Helena repeats.

Sam shakes the bottle at her. “Come on, how did you, you know, at the beginning.”

At the beginning… Myka’s hands… and yearning… so much yearning and aching and waiting… “We did not have a conventional beginning.”

“Like how?”

“Well,” Helena says, trying to keep the thickness of nostalgia out of her voice, “if you want to wait six years to press your suit with Tracy, be my guest. It certainly worked with her sister.”

Sam drinks. “Okay. Thing one: Not waiting six years for _anything_.” She sighs in a way that seems completely out of churlish character, and Helena wonders how much of her bluster is simply for show. “Even though Tracy… yeah, okay, maybe six years if it _takes_ six years, but if it _takes_ six years…”

“What’s thing two?”

“What’s what thing two?”

Helena reminds her, “You said thing one, not waiting six years for anything. Thing two?”

“I don’t know.” She blows out a breath. “God she’s hot.”

Helena tries to go back to prim. “That is not how I think of my sister-in-law.”

Sam says, if she were finishing Helena’s thought, “Because if it is I have to slug you, and your wife does too.”

“I have a very good idea,” Helena says, and it _is_ a good idea, she is certain. “Let’s agree that we each stick to one Bering woman.”

“You are right. That is a very fucking good idea. Because how could anybody handle more than one?”

And yet something about that sounds wrong. “Are you impugning both of us?”

Sam squints at her. “Yeah, probably, but… it’s true, though, right?”

“It is utterly true. May I have another drink?”

Sam closes one eye and looks at the level of alcohol in the bottle. She nods and leans to pour into Helena’s cup.

“How old are you?” Helena asks. This seems pertinent somehow, but Helena can’t quite remember why she thought it so…

… but it doesn’t matter, because Sam’s response is, “None of your fucking business.”

They drink.

“Twenty-five,” Sam says.

Oh, that was why: “Tracy is too old for you. Or you are too young for her.”

“Fuck you.”

Helena knows she does not mean that in the technical sense, but, still, “Oh, I’m _far_ too old for you. As is my wife.”

Sam snarls, “Good thing _I don’t want her_ then.”

“Now you’re trying to offend me,” Helena accuses.

Sam sounds very young, even younger than her age, as she says, “No, I am trying to find out how to get Tracy to look at me twice. Well, for real, now, and then, more than twice.”

“Places you don’t expect,” Helena blurts.

“What?” And this is the only thing that has genuinely attracted Sam’s attention away from the bottle.

Helena sits back. “On Myka’s body, at least.”

Sam says, “Okay. Okay.” Now she looks avid. “What don’t I expect?”

****

The hour is late, and Myka has harassed the costumes as much as she possibly can. She has put this off as long as possible; she is going to have to go get Helena, who is clearly hiding in her dressing room, and they are going to have to have this out, because at some point they are going to have to go home and feed the cat. Junior, at least, will be spared the worst of it; she’s with her grandparents today, and Myka has never been so glad that her parents are so glad to have a grandchild.

She marches to the dressing room to face her fate, whatever shape it’s going to take.

She raises her hand to knock, but from inside, she hears… laughter? _Raucous_ laughter?

She opens the door.

Helena is seated with her back to her mirror, leaning against the vanity, gesturing with a coffee cup. She is gesturing at Sam Shaw, who is half-sitting, half-reclining on the sofa against the opposite wall.

“And then,” Helena says. She pauses, clearly for dramatic effect. “I kicked her.”

“Fuck me. You did not.”

“I did.”

Sam sits up straighter, and Myka sees that she is holding a bourbon bottle. “Should I try that? Is that a move? Do they like it?”

Helena says, very slowly, with a precision that Myka immediately recognizes as a futile attempt to sound something other than completely drunk, “I have been married for twelve years. Thirteen years. A number of years. You tell me.”

And Myka says, and she doesn’t know if she’s saying it to herself or to the bourbonized ballerinas in front of her, “Holy… how much have you two _had_?”

“Hm?” says Sam, then, brightly, “Oh, _hey_.”

“Had what?” says Helena. She clearly had no idea Myka had entered the room until she spoke.

“To _drink!_ ” Myka clarifies.

Helena says, with condescension, “I am fine. Ms. Shaw, on the other hand.”

Sam swings her head back toward Helena and says, “I swear to _god_ if you don’t quit calling me Ms. Shaw I will kick your ass.”

Helena sips delicately from her coffee cup. “I would like to see you try.”

“Don’t make me then.”

“I won’t, Sameen.”

“I didn’t fucking say you could call me _that_.” She drinks from the bottle.

Helena shrugs. “Your choice.”

Myka puts a hand over her eyes. “ _I_ swear to god.”

“Go get your sister,” Helena says, impressively commandingly for as drunk as she is.

“What? Why?”

“Go get your sister and bring her here. She will be taking Ms. Shaw home.”

Sam leans toward Helena; Myka is tempted to reach for her to make sure she doesn’t pitch forward off the sofa, but she catches herself. “What did I just fucking tell you? I’m gonna call you ‘that old lady over there who used to be able to dance, and okay, yeah, maybe she still can, but she will not quit calling me goddamn Ms. Shaw.’ Something that’ll really piss you off.” She sits back, apparently very satisfied with herself.

“Why am I getting _Tracy_?” Myka asks Helena.

“Stop arguing. Get her.”

Myka rolls her eyes. “Fine. Don’t move.”

“I will move if I want to,” Helena informs her.

Now Myka looks heavenward. “As god is my witness, that is the truth.”

Sam starts laughing. She comes precariously close to falling off the sofa again.

Myka does as instructed and finds her sister, who is in the wings, looking at the stage.

“What are you doing?” Myka asks.

“Thinking about birds and snakes,” Tracy says.

“Put ’em back in their cages,” Myka tells her.

When they get back to Helena’s dressing room, Sam is still laughing, and now Helena is giggling along with her.

Tracy looks at them and says, with a note in her voice that Myka can’t place at all, says, “Oh, Sameen.”

Helena looks from Tracy to Sam. She says to Sam, with a satirically coquettish little bob of her head, “Oh, but it’s fine when _Tracy_ says it.”

Sam brandishes the bottle at Helena, then moves to take another drink from it; she blinks at her empty hand like a cartoon character when she realizes that Tracy has plucked it away from her. “Hey!” she says, indignant. “Give me that back!” Tracy shakes her head, and Sam says to Helena, “You are right about these Bering women.”

“Right about what about these Bering women?” Myka asks. She mouths at her sister “these Bering women?” and Tracy sighs.

Sam says, “Acting like they are the boss of you.” She launches herself at Tracy and grabs for the bottle; Tracy holds it above her head, out of reach.

Myka can’t tell if Tracy is joking or serious when she says, “I will show you who is the boss of you, Sameen.”

Myka tells Helena, “And I will show you who is the boss of _you_. Someday. Possibly. What is _happening here_?”

And suddenly Myka wonders if she is the one who is drunk, because Tracy and Sam have disappeared, and Helena has put her arms around Myka’s neck, and she is saying “What do you _think_ is happening,” and there has always, always been something about Helena in a dressing room, and she is now a completely disinhibited Helena in a dressing room, and Myka is only human. She warns, halfheartedly, “You’re going to feel terrible tomorrow already, and our history with that sofa suggests that you’ll be sore, too,” but Helena says, “Who said anything about the sofa, engineer?”

****

Helena and Sam are both awful in rehearsal the next day. Liam demands, “Did you both forget how to dance?”; Helena answers, “Perhaps just with you”; and Sam, unsurprisingly, informs him precisely where, when, and how he is welcome go fuck himself.

Steve is trying very hard to keep the peace, but he looks like he would be happy to hide under a row of seats.

Myka and Tracy stand at the back of the theater, watching the proceedings, and Myka says, “Nobody answered me yesterday. What is happening?”

Tracy says, “Nothing.”

Myka is wearing her glasses today. She pulls them down a bit and looks at her sister over them. Tracy is wearing glasses too. She does not pull hers down; instead, she takes them off and rubs her eyes. Then she puts them back on and looks at Myka. The circles under her eyes are almost bruises, and Myka suspects she hasn’t slept well in quite some time. At any other rehearsal, Myka would chalk that up to the general stress of a new production. “Okay,” Myka says.

Tracy takes hold of Myka’s hand. Myka doesn’t say anything, but she makes sure her grip is firm.

****

One day after school, Mama and Mom say they need to talk to you, and you are pretty sure this means your teacher told them about how last week you tried to take the lizard that lives in the terrarium on the back table in the classroom for a walk on a leash. It turns out that lizards like to go for walks on a leash even less than Pas De does.

But what happens is, Mama says that she is retiring from being a principal dancer. Mom asks if you have any idea what that means.

You are pretty sure you do: “Mama won’t dance in ballets for the company anymore. Are you sad about it?” you ask, because of how her face looks.

“Yes, darling. I am sad about it.”

You want her not to be sad, so you think about it, and you have an idea: “But guess what, Mama?”

“What, darling?”

“That means you won’t have to go on tour without us anymore!” Because you used to go, you and Mom, when you were a baby and you weren’t in school. You think you remember that, anyway; Mom has told you about how she would try to keep you quiet in your bassinet in Mama’s dressing room sometimes when you were really little. But since you started school, you hate when Mama is gone on tour. You are pretty sure Mom hates it too.

Mama looks at Mom, who is actually smiling. Mom says, “That is a very good point, Junior. And I personally had not thought of it, not like that, so you get the gold star.”

She doesn’t mean that you get a real gold star. But Mama is smiling a little bit now too, and that _feels_ like a gold star. “I had not thought of it that way either,” she says.

You start thinking again. “So if Mama is retiring, that means this ballet is the last one?”

“Yes, Junior,” Mom says, really fast.

“So does this mean I finally get to _go_?” you ask.

“Go where, darling?” asks Mama.

“To the ballet for real!”

Mom says to Mama, “Your call.”

Mama looks at you. “You will have to sit quietly through the _entire_ ballet. Can you do that?”

You kick your heels against the sofa. It’s like they think you’re still some baby. “I can _do that_.”

Mom’s squeezing Mama’s shoulder with her hand, and Mama puts her hand over Mom’s. “All right. I will trust you. You are hereby invited to the final performance.”

Mom says, “The last one? Really?”

Mama nods. “If she’s going to see me, I would like it to be when I am at my best. When I have no reason to hold back.”

When the day of the ballet finally finally _finally_ comes, you are getting almost even more excited about going to the party afterwards (“Are you sure about that, too?” Mom asked Mama, and Mama said, “I think I want her there” and Mom said to you “I hope you understand how much your mama loves you,” and you said “Yes,” because of course you do; Mom can be so weird sometimes) than you are about the ballet. Aunt Tracy and Grandma and Grandpa come over to help you get ready and to take you with them, because Mom and Mama have to leave early.

You’ve been to the theater a lot, so going there is not a big deal. Sitting in the seats with a lot of other people around is a little different, especially because they are all dressed up, but even that is not _that_ big a deal.

But then the ballet starts, and it is a big deal. It is like nothing in the world. It is from some other place, because up there on the stage, that isn’t Sam who is grumpy but still lets you show her how much better your chassé is getting. It isn’t exactly that she’s a swan like the story is about, but she’s… the best you can do is, she’s a dancer, and you understand now that there is a way to say that word that tells how what she’s doing is different from other kinds of dancing that people can do. Even you, in Ms. Leena’s studio, you can do some of the things Sam can do, not a lot of them, but you don’t do them like this, but maybe someday you will understand how to turn yourself into whatever other thing a dancer is.

You get a little bored after a while, though, and you are glad when the breaks come. “When does Mama dance?” you ask Aunt Tracy. You wish Mom were here, but Mom is backstage dressing Mama. Mom said she was certainly not going to let anyone else do that, not at this point in history.

“Your mama dances in the next act,” Aunt Tracy says. “Very soon now. Are you ready for this?”

“Yeah,” you say. You’re excited to see it, but of course you’re _ready_. How could you not be _ready_?

It turns out that you really were kind of not exactly _ready_.

Because she isn’t Mama at all anymore, she’s some evil bird-snake-thing, and maybe also a robot at the same time because she is all flowy and slinky and she is melty everywhere but then suddenly she just _stops_ and holds very still like she is fake, and then she turns into something like syrup again. And she is a bad guy and even though Mom and Mama both tried to explain what the whole story was, you maybe had tuned them out after a while even though they told it like a story, but it doesn’t matter now, because you know the story is that whatever the bad thing on the stage is, Uncle Liam (and he is still Uncle Liam) loves that thing but it is a _bad idea_.

Afterwards Aunt Tracy takes you backstage. It is pretty crazy. Everybody is running around and saying things, and you see Sam for just a second and she says “you enjoy yourself, Junior?” and you say yes, and she says, “I can’t talk to you much now, but I will at the party, okay?” and you say okay and she looks like she is going to say something to Aunt Tracy but then she doesn’t.

And then you are in Mama’s dressing room, and Mama is still in her costume and Mom is hugging her and whispering to her, like they sometimes do, but you can tell that this time is different, because Mama is crying. But Aunt Tracy says “Here’s Junior” in a loud voice and they both look at you. And Mama cries even harder, but Mom comes and scoops you up and you try to say that you are too big for this but she doesn’t listen, so she is holding you up and Mama has her arms around you both and Mom is saying that everything is going to be okay, it really is, and Mama is agreeing but still crying. “I love you,” Mom tells her. Then Mom says to you, “What did you think of your mama’s dancing?”

You say, really fast, “I thought you were awesome and scary because you were a lot of things at once and it was like Uncle Liam was making a mistake.” Then you worry. “Was that right?”

Mama kisses your cheek. She has makeup on her face, you can smell it, and it’s weird but good at the same time. Her hair is all pulled back, though, and you miss it, you miss the way her hair feels, the way it always kisses you too. “That was exactly right, my darling baby.”

“Why didn’t you ever let me do this before?” you ask.

Mama says, “I never thought you were ready.” Then she looks at Mom. “I suppose it was I who was never ready.”

****

Helena shoos them all out. Even Myka, but Myka leaves last, and she is _so_ concerned. Helena knows perfectly well that she has made Myka’s life very difficult—certainly for the past few months, and also, certainly, on the whole. She has enjoyed the power of her position. She has relished the way in which her skill, her talent, and her work have made her into someone whom people are obliged to respect, to defer to, even to indulge. She knows that Myka indulges her: sometimes because it is the easier thing to do, but sometimes because Helena charms her into it. Helena knows that Myka will do absolutely anything for her. She is not sure if Myka knows, really knows, that the reverse is also true.

Helena’s hips, particularly her right hip, and knees have stiffened, even in the short time since the performance. She cannot walk without pain, and she should be icing every joint below her waist, not to mention her right shoulder, which has been bothering her more and more over the last several days, almost as much as her hip has over the length of this run. But there is the party, and she cannot miss that, and she cannot spoil that. It is the last one.

So many lasts. The last time she and Liam will dance a pas de deux. The last time she will pirouette within sets created by Tracy… and she has tried not to think _this_ last thought, but: the last time she will wear a costume made for her by Myka.

She does not know what she will do with her days. With her thoughts during those days.

And yet still, the worst thought: she does not know what her body will become.

****

Myka watches Helena walk into the theater’s cavernous, opulent lobby—which looks less like a lobby and more like a club, just for this night—in the slow and careful way she walks everywhere now. She has danced divinely, impeccably in this production, but it has destroyed her, very close to literally so. Myka sees that Helena believes she has effectively hidden the slight limp, the way she tries to avoid putting weight on her right hip. But Myka knows, because Myka knows that Helena used to stand, always, with her body shifted right, her left foot extended almost in a tendu to the side. Tendu à la seconde, she can almost hear Junior correcting her, for Junior is, in her own special way, far worse than Helena.

Now Helena stands with her weight shifted left. And she clearly does not know what to do with her right foot, or with the rest of her right leg, all the way up to the hip that pains her. Myka won’t bring it up tonight, of course. But “please see a doctor” has been filed in her mental notes for some time, and soon, maybe, she will be able to say that to Helena without fear of fallout.

She goes to Helena, stands directly in front of her, so she does not have to shift in either direction, does not have to move at all. She leans down, kisses Helena softly, just once, just in greeting. “What do you need right now?” she asks.

And she is so, so happy, because Helena looks at her in a way that is not brittle, as she had feared, not angry, not anything that will have to be managed. Helena looks at her in the way that she loves: with matter-of-fact tenderness, with a hint of impatience, with balance, with a hint also of covetousness. “I need you to stop worrying,” Helena says. “What do _you_ need?”

Myka laughs and kisses her again. “I actually need you to hang onto Junior for a little while, if that’s okay. My father’s keeping an eye on her right now, but he’s been telling me ‘I need to talk to you’ in this really ominous way, so if you could?”

“You’re asking me if I can handle my own child?”

“I think it’s reasonable to check in on that point, yes. Tonight, anyway.”

Helena gentles again. “I can handle her. Send the little missile over… I’m sure she’ll have recovered enough from the experience of the performance by now to start critiquing my arabesque.”

****

“Myka,” her father begins, “is it possible that a short while ago I saw your sister and a ballerina—”

“Oh god no,” Myka says.

“So I was mistaken?” he asks.

Myka sighs. “No, I meant, ‘oh god no, please tell me that isn’t actually happening.’”

“I don’t think I can tell you that. So it’s Tracy now too? Why do you two like ballerinas so much?”

He sounds truly puzzled, and Myka laughs. “I think you might have to take some of the blame for that,” she says, and he has the grace to look sheepish.

Myka goes in search of her sister.

****

Tracy is by herself at the bar, drinking—not sipping—a glass of wine. Myka bumps her in the shoulder and says, “I half expected to find you and Sam… you know. Right in the middle of the lobby, even.”

“Oh, god,” Tracy says. She drains the glass. “What did Dad tell you?”

“Nothing, really. He just asked about you and ‘a ballerina.’ What exactly did he see?”

“It wasn’t… I mean, I’m not completely sure. She was—well, she was very enthusiastic about how the performance went, and—”

Myka, recalling plenty of her own experience with an enthusiastic post-performance prima, interrupts, “Enough said. What I really want to know is, given that it is clearly happening, why didn’t you tell me?”

Tracy takes a deep breath. “It should be obvious. I didn’t want to bother you with my issues, because Helena and the retirement, and that’s quite the issue, right?”

Myka shakes her head. “Nice try. Not buying it.”

Tracy says, “All right. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I don’t even know what it is yet.”

“Well, Thanksgiving dinner just got a lot more interesting, anyway. And when I say that, what I mean is that I personally will be going to McDonald’s to avoid the drama.”

“There is no need for that. It’s too soon. Myka, I don’t know what I’m doing. She’s so young, and I haven’t even thought about what it means that she’s a woman.”

Myka tells her, “You had just better thank your lucky stars, and also me, that I already had a kid. Because the weeping and wailing you would get if we were both with women and there seemed to be no kids on the horizon? My _god_.”

“Mom is not like that,” Tracy scoffs.

“As if I was talking about Mom.”

Myka watches Tracy’s eyes widen, hears her breathing change, as Sam walks up with Junior. “Hey, Berings.”

Junior says, “Mom is a Bering-Wells.”

Sam looks at Junior. She doesn’t have to tilt her head very far down to do that. “Okay.” Then to Tracy: “Hey, Bering.”

Tracy says, “Hi,” in a breathy way that Myka barely avoids laughing out loud at. Myka has not had much opportunity, over the years, to watch her sister become uncomfortable like this. _Embarrassed_ like this. She feels guilty for enjoying it… but she decides to keep on enjoying it, at least for a while, anyway.

Sam says to Tracy, “This junior Bering has been telling me that you took her to secret ballet lessons.”

And Junior corrects her, “Junior Bering-Wells.”

“Here’s an idea, kid: you let me say one fu…” To Myka, Sam says, “Are you really serious about the swearing thing? Like _all_ the time serious?” She is clearly holding herself in check—but she is about to lose it.

Myka knows the feeling; she nods, though, in response. If she tries to speak, she will start laughing hysterically.

Sam splutters, “Forklifts! Fishsticks! What the eff else starts with eff?”

“Fantastic,” Junior offers.

Sam says, tightly controlled, “Okay. You let me say one fantastic sentence, okay?” She shakes her head at Tracy. “Secret fantastic ballet lessons. Because Helena is insane, or because _you_ are?”

Junior says, “Because Aunt Tracy is _awesome_.”

“Thanks, Junior,” Tracy says. She ruffles Junior’s curls.

“The kid is not wrong,” Sam says.

“Thanks, Sameen.” Tracy doesn’t ruffle Sam’s hair.

“Why does Aunt Tracy call you Sameen?”

Sam says, “Well, because it’s my name, but mostly because she… because… you know what? I don’t know.” She looks, helplessly, at Tracy. Tracy does not help her out.

“Can I call you Sameen?” Junior asks.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Except if it’s Aunt Tracy.”

“Right.”

Junior says, as if pronouncing a verdict, “Sam, you are kind of confusing.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, kid, I get that a lot.”

Tracy looks down at Junior, but she is clearly talking to Sam when she says, “Not _kind of_ confusing. _Very_ confusing.”

Sam says, “Just you wait, Bering,” and now Tracy looks at her. Sam gets a look on her face that even Myka has to admit is nearly irresistible: hopeful but hangdog, a few shades away from happy, practically sighing “please” from every pore.

Myka says, “Junior, where’s your mama?”

“She had to talk to Mrs. Frederic.”

Myka takes her daughter’s hand. “Let’s go talk to Mrs. Frederic with her, okay? Leave these two… lovebirds, or whatever, alone.”

“Lovebirds?” Junior asks.

Myka gives in to the temptation to give her sister just a bit of grief. “I’ll explain at some point before Thanksgiving. Sam, what’s your position on marshmallows on your sweet potatoes?”

“Marshmallows are fu…antastic,” Sam says. “They are fantastic fantastic.”

Myka laughs. “Well, fantastic me. I’d’ve taken you for some kind of fantastic purist.”

“This is getting a little too cutesy for me,” Sam tells her, “but I gotta say, I think ‘yes marshmallows’ _is_ the fantastic purist position.”

Tracy says, “Would you both please.”

“Too cutesy for you too, huh?” Sam asks, and she turns that expression back on, full force. Tracy closes her eyes.

Myka wants to tell her, from experience, that that won’t help at all. It won’t change the situation even a little bit. Instead she says, sincerely, “Tracy, I apologize. C’mon, Junior, let’s find your mama. I bet _she_ won’t think it’s too cutesy.”

****

Later in the evening, but not very late, Liam comes to Helena and says, “Steve and I, we’ll have to go home in not too long; his knee’s bothering him.”

Helena thinks about how to respond. She is going to have to say it to someone, she supposes. “My hip has been bothering me,” she admits.

Liam nods. “I know. I could feel it. You’ve been shifting left for weeks and weeks now. You’ve hidden it really well, though, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Do you think Myka knows?”

This makes Liam snort. “Do you think you can hide anything from her?”

“Well, for six years…”

“You were both young,” he says. “And kind of stupid.”

“And now?”

“Now you’re both old. And _you’re_ still kind of stupid.”

Helena gathers herself. “Well, _you_ are still kind of…” But then she drops it. “Oh, I don’t want to trade insults. Not tonight.”

“What do you want, Giselle?” he asks.

Twenty years he has called her that. She smiles. “I want you to keep calling me Giselle. Until we’re very old.”

Liam hee-haws a laugh. “We’re already very old.” Then he quiets to a smile. “But assuming Steve doesn’t kill me while he’s recovering from his surgery, you have a deal.”

Myka appears, as if by magic, at Helena’s side. “What’s this deal?” she asks.

Helena shakes her head. “It doesn’t really bear repeating.”

Liam kisses Helena’s cheek, then kisses Myka’s. “I’ll go find that skinny mint and say goodnight, then get my poor old man home.”

“How about you?” Myka asks Helena, once they are alone.

“Who, me? Your poor old lady?”

“Well, you’re not poor or old. But you’re certainly a lady, and I’m certainly happy about that. And I would also like to take advantage of that, whenever you decide you would like to go home. Assuming you have a similar interest.”

Helena sighs. “I do have an interest. But I don’t think I can… follow up on it.”

“Okay,” Myka says. “Why not?”

“My hip has been bothering me.”

“I know.” And the way she says it, simply but with a hint of worry, makes Helena wonder if she has known even longer than Liam has.

“Liam said you would.”

“Liam is a smart boy.”

“Will you still love me?” Helena asks. She shouldn’t, she knows, but if she could just hear Myka _say_ it…

“When? A minute from now? Tomorrow morning? When Junior graduates from high school? Next Tuesday? Pretty sure the answer’s always going to be yes.”

“When I walk with a cane.”

“Let’s see…” Myka moves her head around, as if considering the idea. As she does so, something catches her eye: “Oh, man,” she says. She points to the bar, where Tracy and Sam are standing only a very few inches away from each other, seemingly engaged in an intense staring contest. “I think it is pretty much a given that you’re going to be seeing Sam around,” Myka now says. “Are you going to be okay with that?”

Helena knows she is envious by nature. She will, she knows, be unable to keep from resenting Sam’s youth and power and ability from time to time, and those times will try Myka’s patience, and they will not reflect at all well upon Helena herself. But now she shrugs. “It might be nice to have an ally.”

Clearly this was not the response Myka expected. “An _ally_?”

Helena says, “Someone who understands what it is like to deal with a Bering woman. Intimately.”

“I’m not a Bering woman anymore,” Myka reminds her. “I’m a Bering-Wells. And cane or no cane… so are you.”

 END


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